Appointments vs visits
The most important distinction in decavet: the trip versus the work for one animal.
This is the one distinction worth learning early, because it shapes scheduling, records, and billing.
An appointment is the trip
An appointment is a single trip to one place at one time. It records:
- when — the date and time,
- where — a location (a barn or farm) or an ad-hoc address,
- who's going — the provider making the call,
- and travel details like notes, mileage, and any travel fee.
A visit is the work for one animal
A visit is what you do for one animal during that trip. It records the visit type (such as a Wellness Exam or Lameness Exam), the services you performed, your clinical notes, and a status of its own.
One trip, many visits
The reason they're separate: a single trip often means several animals.
Example: You drive to Miller Farm once (one appointment) and see three horses there. That's three visits under the one appointment — a lameness exam, a wellness check, and a vaccination. You drove once, but you did three distinct pieces of work, and each can be billed and recorded on its own.
If appointments and visits were the same thing, you couldn't see three animals on one trip without pretending it was three trips.
Each has its own status
Because they're different things, they track progress separately:
- Appointment status: Scheduled → En route → In progress → Completed (or Cancelled).
- Visit status: Scheduled → En route → In progress → Completed (or No-show / Cancelled).
You might be In progress on the trip overall while one horse's visit is already Completed and the next is still Scheduled.
How this affects billing
Billing flows from visits, not appointments. The services on each visit become the lines on an invoice. When several animals on one trip belong to different owners, you can produce a separate invoice per owner — see Split billing.